Thinking about Video Games: Interviews with the Experts (Digital Game Studies) by David S. Heineman

Author:David S. Heineman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2015-08-02T14:00:00+00:00

HEINEMAN: Some of the games that you have been associated with have won a number of industry awards as “indie” titles, and you’ve also been involved in several projects designed to foster independent game development. Given that this term has followed you around a lot, what does the word independent mean to you (when it comes to gaming in particular)?

SANTIAGO: It was a term that both Jenova Chen and I felt like we had to define for ourselves early on, since, technically, thatgamecompany was not an independent studio and we were fully financed by Sony Computer Entertainment. What we came to was that it felt like “indie” referred to making games that had unique content that couldn’t be made within the existing paradigms of game development, or that you were making them in a different way, or that your business model was different. For example, the fact that you were creating a game with a small team was different from the standard model. In some cases, “indie” meant you were doing several things simultaneously (as with projects like World of Goo or Braid).

HEINEMAN: Do you find that the other people who consider themselves independent game developers might disagree in any way with that definition? For example, in the music and film industries, “indie” artists will often speak about “indie” being defined as something like “art for noncommercial purposes,” yet other people will disagree and argue that “indie” just means that you are not signed on to a major label or that you are not working for a major studio. Does that kind of debate find its way into independent game development, and, if so, how does that play out?

SANTIAGO: The discussion, it definitely happens. In general, the feeling is that “indie” is just any development that happens outside of the large studio model. This year only two of the Game Developer Choice Awards went to AAA studios, so this year has been really huge for independent developers, but that’s not the norm. It is still a totally different paradigm operating within a big studio system. So I’m fine with continuing with that definition, but there definitely are the conversations around what “responsibility” we have to push new boundaries in game development or express new messages, as indie artists do in other mediums.

When you are independent, the idea is that you are afforded a freedom to make games about whatever you want and make them in whatever way you want. The question of “Are we as an independent community really leveraging the freedom that we have?” I think is a conversation that persists each year and can manifest itself especially around award season. I remember a couple of years ago that the Pixel Junk Eden game by Q Games was up for an award or two in the Independent Games Summit [IGS] at the Game Developers Choice Awards. A lot of people really questioned their inclusion as a nominee because they were financially independent but were distributed through Sony and thus had this huge platform through Sony.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.